Hottest Hotel Marketing Topics of 2016

As has become customary on my blog, every year (well almost) I go over the most popular topics from HotelMarketing.com and do a bit of analysis and review of what hoteliers and hotel marketers considered the most interesting topics of the year.

It is interesting to see how trends evolve, what is catching on and what we're moving away from. Below I've included the charts with the percentages and explained how I categorized the list.

Previous years' HOT TOPICS

The topics that we loved, those we didn't care about much and those. The trending and the not so trending hotel marketing topics. This was the year of the OTAs and the year Direct Booking probably lost some of it's newness.

There's a hunger for better solutions

Topping the list this year was new solutions being offered to hotel marketers, new revenue management solutions, communications platforms, chatbots and new distribution channels came out on top. The only issue with that is that most of those solutions were being offered by existing big brands such as Expedia and Booking.com and I believe they skewed the results. Still it does show interest for innovation which is great. My only wish is that we'd see more of the smaller companies and startups who are trying to push the envelope.

Direct Bookings are still hot

A full quarter of the top 60 list was about increasing direct revenue which shows that we've not yet found the a comfortable mix on hotel distribution. Hoteliers are still trying to find better solutions. Several articles still talk about a "war between hotels and OTAs" which in my opinion is pushing it a little too far. But suffice it to say, there seems to be a need to solve that problem. In addition to the mentions of direct booking one of the topics that caught hoteliers was everything related to OTA conflicts and controversy which proves the point.

OTA Innovations still caught our attention

Interestingly in third place was everything related to how to improve one's distribution on on OTAs and how OTAs are changing their search algorithms and data. So on the one hand we want to get more out of OTAs and on the other we want more direct. While we could say hotel marketers want to eat their cake and still have it, I think it is more about finding a balanced and less dependent distribution mix.

Airbnb Worrying hoteliers

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Airbnb is increasingly seen as a threat by hoteliers. There is no doubt they are disrupting the market, this year was a little more agressive than last year with Airbnb being seen as a more direct threat. The reality is they are taking, albeit a small, share of hotel revenue and hotel marketers need to get better at improving product and marketing not to loose too much revenue.

Rate Parity lost steam

Last year's hottest topic was the end of rate parity, this was much less the case this year with some 5% of articles discussing that as a topic. And correctly so. I don't believe rate dis-parity is the solution, restrictions don't help but finding a balance between parity and dis-parity is something one should do on a case by case basis. This isn't a silver bullet that will solve all direct booking or OTA dominance.

What happened to Metasearch?

The interest for metasearch seems to have waned dramatically, despite the changes in the industry it seems it wasn't the hottest topic. Not sure if that means there's a consolidation phase starting (seems like it already started) or that, like reviews, it has become part of the daily routine and isn't innovating.

Reviews are a matter of fact

Comparing to a few years ago, the perception of reviews, review management and the effect of reviews on revenue seems to have changed quite a lot with hardly any mention. Probably because by now hoteliers have learnt that managing reviews is a must and has been integrated into hotel life.

The chart

This year, I'm publishing the chart of top topics per category in addition to the list so you can make your own opinions.

Hotel Marketing Topics 2016

The 60 most read articles from HotelMarketing.com categorized into the 10 most important recurring themes per the article titles.

What didn't make the list & Other notes

As I mentioned above, there's could be a lot more coverage about innovation in the hotel marketing space, new applications, software and platforms would be great. There are more new tools and applications for hotels than we've had in a long time. Each working to improve hotel's marketing efforts to compete with the chains or OTAs in service quality and reach. The Hotel Technology Index lists some 500+ hotel tech products and providers, and that list is not complete by far.

Chatbots and AI Voice is not yet on the radar. While it is still in it's infancy as a technology hoteliers and marketers would do well to prepare for the paradigm shift that is probably going to happen to hotel distribution and hotel bookings. The main way to prepare for that now is ensure existing providers are integrating with these solutions.

The brands that dominated

As usual brands tend to make us click and read. 66% of the top articles contained a brand name which is telling. And I hope this article doesn't encourage writers to making click-bait articles next year. This year's top brands list was again dominated by Booking.com but Expedia caught up. The big three brands in hotel marketing seems to be Booking, Expedia and Google which reflects pretty well on the innovators. Airbnb is taking up more of our mindshare every year. Oddly, TripAdvisor wasn't big in the news this year, as one of the big players last year. Interestingly hotel brands are coming back up, yet I was surprised that AccorHotels wasn't on the list as they have been shifting to an innovation strategy over 2016, but we'll probably hear more about them next year.

Hottest brands of 2016

The brands that attracted most reads per HotelMarketing's 60 most read articles of 2016

Most popular posts in 2016

And as is customary here is the full list including links in case you didn't get it in your inbox.

The 10th edition of the Hotel Marketing Benchmark covers recent updates, new marketing technologies, some opinions about the shifts happening in the hotel marketing industry. We've gathered some great and fun marketing initiatives of the last few month and highlight some of the future technology trends we expect will soon come to be game changers in the industry.